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The deployment of foreign private security firms in Ukraine is unacceptable as they increase the risk of an outbreak of civil war, Dennis John Kucinich, a former US Representative from Ohio and a two-time presidential candidate, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
“We saw in Iraq how private security forces can get out of control. Whenever you are in a politically sensitive, a militarily sensitive situation the last thing you want is private security out there, because they can actually profit by an expanded conflict. They can stir up a war and then profit from it,” Kucinich said. (MOREHERE)
Russia has agreed to call for irregular armed groups in Eastern Ukraine to relinquish their occupation of government buildings and lay down their arms in exchange for “inclusive, transparent, and accountable” constitutional reforms in the country.
The agreement was presented as just the first step in what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov said would be an ongoing process between their respective countries, the European Union, and Ukraine’s fragile government to de-escalate the crisis.
The constitutional reforms agreed on could potentially open the way towards greater autonomy for parts of the Russian-speaking east of the country – a foremost demand of both the armed groups and their backers in Moscow.
Russia and Ukraine agreed to further talks mediated by Europe in the near future, but Lavrov said Moscow had not retreated from its insistence that its former ally, which recently deposed its pro-Russian government in favor of greater ties to Europe, be federalized to allow the east to forge economic, political, and cultural ties to its former Soviet ruler.
Kyiv and its Western backers roundly accuse Russia of engineering the rebel movement currently occupying buildings in the east. Unrest has increasingly seen the population’s loyalties split between its mainly Ukrainian-speaking west and largely Russian-speaking east. Read more